Your Digital Footprint: A Social Media Checklist
A key component of your professional (and personal) brand is your online presence. This is important to consider however active you are (or aren’t) on social media. You should always assume that your networking contacts and any potential employers will conduct a search and may scrutinize your online presence.
We recommend that you do a comprehensive search against your name to ensure that your online presence reflects well on your brand. Here are some actions to take to ensure that you have your bases covered:
Identify all your accounts.
Do you have an old social media account or blog that you’re no longer using or, worse still, have forgotten about?
Delete old accounts.
If you have accounts you are no longer using or that are unprofessional in nature, delete them.
Remove unnecessary or inappropriate content.
Once you have decided which accounts you want to keep, check all your activity on each account. Delete any inappropriate or unprofessional posts (or comments on other people’s posts).
Update your profile picture(s).
Take a critical look at each of your profile photos. On LinkedIn, it is essential that you use a hi-res professional headshot. On your other accounts, determine whether you are comfortable with the photo assuming that it will be seen by a potential employer.
Update your profile, especially on LinkedIn.
Out-of-date information does not reflect well on you. Make sure that you update and expand your profile(s) to reflect your relevant experience, achievements and skill set. Learn how to enhance and refine your LinkedIn profile in the LinkedIn Profile tab in this section.
Mind who you follow.
If there are organizations that you are particularly interested in, follow their social media accounts to stay up to date with their news and other posts. You will also get a good sense of what the culture is like there. Review who you openly follow and think about what, if anything, this says about you. You may want to unfollow anyone that you think would be problematic from a potential employer’s perspective.
Check your privacy settings.
Each social network has different privacy settings that you need to check. These privacy settings are vital to understand and can play an important role in how you appear to recruiters and hiring managers. It’s also important to keep up to date on these privacy updates, since social networks are constantly evolving. For a recent example, LinkedIn updated a privacy setting where you can let recruiters know that you’re actively searching for jobs without making it known to your connections or current employer.
What else comes up when you search for yourself?
You may find that someone with the same or a similar name shows up in a way that is potentially damaging. Know this ahead of time and if you believe that you are close to an offer, get ahead of it so that it doesn’t get in the way at the last minute. You can talk with your Volta counselor about how best to manage this type of situation.